 raven wrote:So, I talked to Mike Boozer on the phone this morning about a refund, and expressed some of the same concerns which are being aired here.
I obviously don't speak for GenCon, and can't swear that I am quoting him perfectly on this, but what I took away from the phone call was this:
1) There WILL be a way to handle transferring e-tickets to a friend. It's not ready yet, but it's high on their priority list, and they are aware that True Dungeon players are eagerly waiting for it.
2) There WILL be a way for a person to use multiple tickets for themselves.
The example I gave was: “What if my friend (who uses a Scooter for mobility) has 2 tickets - because he wants twice as much space to move around in the cramped Dungeon - and he wants to use both tickets for himself? Would he be able to scan his badge twice, and TD would get credit for both tickets?” and Mike assured me that this was possible, so long as True Dungeon was willing to accept this, and that they would be given credit for both tickets. He even brought up the example where people will do challenge runs with fewer people than tickets, and that this could still work.
If Mike is reading these forums and wants to confirm this, I'd appreciate it! (Or please correct me if I came away with the wrong impression.)
I will say, though, that Mike did some excellent customer service and both managed to take care of my ticketing issue, AND reassured me that GenCon was aware of these issues and taking things very seriously. I'm now looking forward to August with a lot less apprehension than I had been. Both GenCon and True Dungeon take their player base seriously, and want this e-ticket experiment to be a success.
I wish GenCon all the best in their new venture, and hope that the potential bugs and corner-cases raised on these forums are addressed (and tested!) well before August.

Essentially this is what I said.

On point #2 If I inferred that scanning the badge twice was the solution, then that is not correct necessarily. It is a possible option, but is not a for sure one.

We are aware of the issues raised here and as has been said by Gen Con employees on this thread we are working on them.

To be clear we were working on many of them before they were raised in many cases!

Thanks for the explanation. Some of the earlier posts were making it sound like a large fraction of TD tickets fall into your first category, people paying extra money to exclude everyone else from playing with them.Could categories 2 and 3 be solved by letting the ticketed players choose classes and difficulty level before the party gets filled out from the waitlist?
I assume that's what you already do on the TD forums; surely the people waiting hours to get in include some geared up for nightmare difficulty.
When an event regularly sells out so many time slots, every run ought to be full. Buy tickets to all three dungeons if you want, but don't artificially inflate demand beyond the actual number of players.

Hiya Selene,

I've been playing TD since it premiered at GenCon, and both played through the WaitList, and had people from the WaitList join my party, so I hope I can shed some light on your questions.

First... although it's not impossible, it's extremely unlikely to find people in the WaitList who are geared for Nightmare difficulty. Since you can only do Nightmare with a unanimous vote, the people who buy $500 - $1000 (or more) of tokens in order to play at that level will almost always coordinate with a group of people who are similarly equipped. Failure to do so either results in them standing for hours in the waitlist looking for a group willing to do Nightmare with them, or giving up and playing on Normal mode where their tokens let them one-shot the monster while the rest of the group stands around and glares at them for hogging all the glory.

Second, True Dungeon does - to the best of their ability - respect the wishes of the existing party when recruiting someone from the waitlist to join a pre-made group. But, as KentReznor notes, it's really hard to find someone from waitlist who is prepared for Nightmare setting AND has cash on hand to pay for the (already purchased) ticket.

Usually, the volunteers are just doing the best they can. If they can't find a perfect match, they grab a warm body and say, "Please sort this out amongst yourselves!" and quickly move on to resolving the next problem in under 12 minutes. I've seen TD vets drop down to Normal mode in order to accommodate new players. I've seen them soak the cost of the ticket to let a really excited (but broke) teenager join, and I've seen them scramble the classes at the last minute to let their new recruit play the Rogue class she so desperately wants.

But just as often, I've seen bewildered newbies told, "Here - you're playing the $Fighter. We'll lend you some Nightmare level tokens. Just follow our instructions, and stay out of the way." And then the newbie gets shunted to the side and just watches as the Vets blow their way through the monsters. It's a miserable 2 hours, and an incredibly expensive introduction to a game you'll probably never want to come back to.

No one wants that experience, and no one really wants to inflict it on anyone. That's why they'd rather "ghost" the ticket, and let the next newbie in line join a party which they'll actually have fun with.

As June dawns on us and we near the two month point before the con, can we get an update on the ticket transfer system and solutions for the problems associated specifically with True Dungeon. With the events mostly sold out, we need to be able to transfer tickets in June to make sure the more experienced TD groups can finalize their schedules. At present, we have been told that even the partners like True Adventures haven’t seen the system yet and won’t be able to test it for a few more weeks.

Does GenCon have a ticket transfer solution working in, at least, a beta environment where you can confirm it works (albeit in a much more limited test environment)?

Have you created a work around to allow for something other than a single person waiting at the door to scan for their friends to come in when we bought their tickets (accounting for more than a quarter of TD sales)? Without that, TD will become a logistics nightmare unable to actually do runs on time (resulting in hundreds of people with valid etickets never getting to do runs since the entire system was slowed down by not having appropriate prep time with each new group.)

Will the system reliably work under Lucas Oil where both wifi and cell coverage is, at best, spotty?

As someone who does not have a dog in the race, it is reasonable to assume that GenCon approached TD to see if they would be willing to test etickets? If that is true, than woundn't TD already be in the loop and ready to handle most of the concerns that have been expressed here?

Like I said, I do have TD tickets but they are all paper tickets, not etickets.

 bushmaster wrote:As someone who does not have a dog in the race, it is reasonable to assume that GenCon approached TD to see if they would be willing to test etickets? If that is true, than woundn't TD already be in the loop and ready to handle most of the concerns that have been expressed here?
Like I said, I do have TD tickets but they are all paper tickets, not etickets.

Actually, you won't have paper tickets for TD. All tickets this year for TD are electronic. As for True Dungeon testing it, Jeff (head of TD) hasn't seen the system yet and won't for a few more weeks. This is why we are concerned. It's the most complex GenCon event with a significant number of characteristics that are unique. It isn't an ideal testing ground, especially if it can't be tested with "load" in a similar environment (high demand by users in limited reception)(TD is under Lucas Oil - poor wifi and cell reception).

Jeff does a very good job in adapting to difficult environments pushed on him. With that said, doing etickets without backup paper copies is not a good idea. Additionally, software does unexpected things in high load environments when it is first released. It's not a recommended business practice to put a quarter of your customer base on an untested system in a live environment with no backup solution available. You normally beta something in smaller controlled groups then gradually expand. I hope GenCon reverses course and does the latter (small scale tests this year then full implementation the following year resolving any discovered bugs).

We'll see. My guess is by the 2nd week of July we'll hear something in terms of how initial alpha testing went. Hopefully, it goes smoothly :)

In another of the e-ticket threads, support has indicated they are no longer promising that tickets will be transferrable for this GenCon. Without transferring tickets, that means organized runs have to have the purchaser there before anyone shows up then stand around and wait for everyone to show and nobody can go in until they all show up or whoever is late can't go at all. This last element really needs to be corrected. We were also promised the ability to ghost runs (where a person buys multiple tickets for a single person - usually where 2-5 people bought out a whole run). Apparently, ghosting can't happen if this explanation is correct.